Nature, record heat, tipping points, Hansen's opinion on weather noise, and all that

More record warmth as scientists warn of global tipping point – CNN.com

— It’s hot out there. But this time, it’s more than idle watercooler talk, according to weather scientists.

At the same time the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s National Climatic Data Center has released a report noting that this spring in the United States has been the warmest since record-keeping began in 1895, a group of scientists has published a paper in the journal Nature warning that the planet is approaching a critical tipping point because of climate and other factors.

Rampant population growth and changes to the environment caused by humans, including the burning of fossil fuels and the conversion of nearly 43% of the planet’s land to farms or cities, threaten to cause an abrupt and unpredictable shift in the global ecosystem, 22 scientists from five countries said in their paper.

In its report issued Thursday, the climate data center said the average U.S. temperature between March and May was 57.1 degrees, 5.2 degrees above the long-term average from 1901 to 2000.

While May was only the second-warmest on record, it was still in the top third for monthly average temperatures, marking 12 consecutive months with temperatures in that range, said Jake Crouch, a NOAA climate scientist.

“For that to happen 12 times in a row in a random circumstance is one in 540,000,” he said.

Globally, NOAA reported in May that the average temperature in April was 1.17 degrees warmer than the average from the past century, making it the fifth-warmest April since at least 1880.

It was the 326th consecutive month that global temperatures exceeded the 20th-century average, NOAA said.

The warm spring weather in the United States was partially the result of the waning La Niña, a pattern of below-average sea surface temperatures in the central Pacific that tends to help direct the high-level jet stream and influence weather patterns nationwide.

But it was also partially the result of long-term climate change, Crouch said.

“The pattern we’ve been in for the last 12 months is exactly what we would expect in climate change,” he said.

…

A shift in the biosphere is possible by 2100 if nothing is done to better predict changes and act upon them, said Anthony D. Barnosky, professor of integrative biology at the University of California, Berkeley and lead author on the Nature article.

“If we do nothing, I personally think we hit this tipping point,” Barnosky said Friday. “It means the world will be very different, losing biodiversity and (affecting where) species live in particular places.”

But that doesn’t get much attention because it doesn’t have a gloom and doom quality for MSM News.

But this was found to be based on a synoptic pattern, basically weather noise. This spring in the USA is no different. Even the father of global warming, Jim Hansen says the same thing: (hat tip to Chris Horner and the CEI FOIA efforts for us being able to see this email)

And here in the article excepted above, Jake Crouch, CNN, and other MSM outlets aren’t even talking about a full year, just three months.

“If it bleeds it leads”, was never more true.

Some graphs: (thanks to Joe D’Aleo, all data NCDC data)

The state monthly records through the end of the 2009.. This depicts the 12 monthly records for the 50 states (600 data points). There were likely March heat records set in some states and perhaps some other months so the 2010s will show and take away from some prior years.

The 1930s stands out as the hottest decade, the 1910s and 1950s were second, 1990s third and 1980s fourth. This decade doesn’t rank although it is early.

All time cold records look like this.

It seems the climate was much more variable, with more extremes in the 1930’s.

118 thoughts on “Nature, record heat, tipping points, Hansen's opinion on weather noise, and all that”

1895…. we were just coming out of the Little Ice Age. Today’s temperatures are higher than that. *shock* *surprise* [/snark]
In point of fact we are merely approaching the Middle Ages Warm Period temperatures. That was a time period which was absolutely great for humans and other creatures, yet we’re supposed to be horrified. What a crock of BS.

Many “records” are taken from stations that have only been operating since the 1990’s. Yawn. What is impressive is when a “cold low” record from the 1800’s is broken by this Spring’s temperatures. You would think that with all that CO2 in the air being evenly mixed, we would be able to retain that heat and not have any such cold low records being made. Be it one year or over several years. We should, according to CO2 theory, at least be average if not warmer in Burns, Meacham, Baker City, Eugene, and Spokan, just to name a few.

Geologic reconstructions indicate that millions of years ago, the Earth’s temperature has been 5-7C warmer than today while CO2 concentrations fluctuated as high as 7,000 ppm. Earth did not experience a tripping point during these geologic periods. Only an idiot or a “believer” would propose that today’s temperatures and CO2 concentrations could produce a “tipping point”! Don’t these idiots look at data from the past billion years. Or are they so blinded by their religion that they ignore obvious contrarian data. Shame on them!
Bill

Interesting that, even in 2007, Hansen still had 1934 as the warmest year. His recent graphs don’t have it anywhere near there (see Steven Goddard’s site). And, this may be the all time best cherry picking of data – 3 months, 2% of the earth’s surface, pretty strong evidence that CO2 is bad stuff … /sarc

Hansen states, “As you can see in our 2001 paper, 1934 was the warmest in our record then, and it is now, with and without the programming flaw.”
Yes, but what about 2007? Did you forget the time back then when you had 1998 “adjusted” into the lead, before the keen eyes of McIntyre and his crew at Climate Audit led to a “readjustment of the adjustment.”
August 8, 2007: http://climateaudit.org/2007/08/08/a-new-leaderboard-at-the-us-open/
Then, if you look down the comments on that post, you’ll note Hansen later “readjusted the adjusted adjustment.”
Poor Hansen. He might wish this stuff could be “disappeared,” but the internet elephant never forgets.

Early record levels may be easy to beat, progressively becoming harder and harder to surpass. I would think the real question would be whether record temps are broken over a broad area by large margin repeatedly over a long period of time, and seems to have happened in the 30s. Another long heat wave might not always beat those records, so would not seem as severe if the measure is breaking record temps.
For better comparison, it may be necessary to scale the record-breaking numbers by the number of years of data in the record prior to the date reported in the graph. That might help correct the apparent significance of these data.

Pick any moment in time throughout the geological history of the Earth. Look at the climate. It will be irreversibly different from the climate 100 years earlier and 100 years later. No tipping points, just irreversibly different. These differences will have an impact on where species live. Biodiversity will generally go up (if it warms) and down (if it cools). It has always been thus!
Only now, with the advent of ‘highly educated’, underfunded, over programmed scientific types do we get the message that this ‘constancy of change’ is a crisis and must be fixed (with their invaluable guidance, of course).
Please! Can’t they find something more constructive to do with their lives? I hear there is a spill on isle two!

Surpassing old temp. records disproves AGW theory. If the new record is AGW related, how did it get so hot 30-100 or more years ago? Evidence of AGW would be breaking 1 year old records every year. Matching or exceeding old records is something the AGW crowd should try to cover up, either that or just adjust old data down…….. Oh yeah……now I get it. Climate science is the one where you adjust observational data to match predictive data.

“If we do nothing, I personally think we hit this tipping point,” Barnosky said Friday.
Nice statement about his personal belief system, The fact that he has to present it like that presumably means there is no data or real evidence of his tipping point.
“For that to happen 12 times in a row in a random circumstance is one in 540,000,” he said.[Jake Crouch, a NOAA climate scientist.]
But of course climate is not a random process so this figure is meaningless and his statement totally misleading. There’s the incredible thermal inertia in the system, so having 12 consecutive warm months during a warm year is actually rather likely and unrelated to his random events probability calculations.
These guys are supposed to be professional scientists. That they are reduced to making such senseless, scientifically stupid comments publicly just shows how little real science they have to report.
They are desperate.

Well, they are all in for a surprise coming their way soon. I suspect all their measuring temp. equipment in their satellites has not been calibrated for quite a bit of time and/or has already been measuring “global” temperature erroneously, due to wrong precision.
Global temps. are dropping at an alarming rate. For example, here in South Africa, in Kimberley (think of diamonds) average temperatures have dropped by more than 1.5 degrees C since 2000.http://www.letterdash.com/henryp/global-cooling-is-here

I have just read about this on a norwegian blog, and not surprisingly I find it here on WUWT too. One year or two ago I became quite surprised hearing about the Dust Bowl on History Channel. Both [scaring] and fascinating. The explanation part was about “the wind and the rain” and why. Some of this “why” you can find on this excellent website about climate; http://www.climate4you.com under the heading “ocean” and AMO.
It seems like the AMO has quite an effect on temperatures in the US. The AMO index even seem to be growing according to the graphics represented at climate4you, and according to the evolving temperatures in the US. If this should be the case, no wonder the recent temperatures are high.
Here I have pasted one graph onto another, AMO and US temperatures. They seem to follow each other both in amplitude and in the derivation of time. Maybe your’e on a peak now or quite soon?https://docs.google.com/file/d/0BzE2_VqLf31cNjRNWEZOOV9HcEk/edit
Thanks’s for a great website!

“where the word “coolest” is verboten.”
=====================================================
This reminds me of when Bush Sr. was running for reelection against Bill Clinton. Any economic news by the MSM said it “the worst since….”. It might have only been “the worst since” yesterday but they had to work that phrase or a similar one into every news report.
Now “warmest” and “extreme” are OK, “coolest” and “normal” are not.

I almost posted this on the UAH temp thread.
I finally moved my orchid plants outside two weeks ago here in the mid-atlantic. Normally I get them outside in early April. That makes it 4-6 weeks later this year. I keep a close watch on nighttime temperatures as the orchids really don’t like low temperatures. Below forty gets risky and I keep the orchids inside till there are a reliable run of nights above 40F.
I also usually expect Memorial day to be the first 90F temperatures of the year. We had one day close to 90F. There are two days this week scheduled to be just above 90F. April may have been warm, but where I live, May was downright chilly.
I don’t doubt that May was warm for some folks, makes me wonder just which stations got rolled into the May temp.

“Rampant population growth and changes to the environment caused by humans, including the burning of fossil fuels and the conversion of nearly 43% of the planet’s land to farms or cities, threaten to cause an abrupt and unpredictable shift in the global ecosystem, 22 scientists from five countries said in their paper.”
————————————
I always have a problem with numbers like that 43%. It sounds very different if you say that 90% of the people occupy 3% of the land. The Sahara,Gobi, Northern Canada, Russia and Mongolia are virtually empty. Antarctica, Central Australia, most mountain ranges and nearly all rainforests are sparsely populated. Interesting way of interpreting reality. Much like going from 30 years down to 3 months as a climate marker.
Perhaps we could deploy the same sort of statistical acrobatics by dividing the 5 Countries into the total number of Countries and the 22 scientists into the total number of PHDs
According to Matt Rosenberg, in this:
http:/geography.about.com/od/populationgeography/a/popdensity.htm
90% of the population occupies 3% of the land. Land covers 29% of the globe.
.03 x .29 = .0087 = .87% Let’s call it 1%. Therefore, if Mr. Rosenberg is
correct with his data, I believe it’s very safe to say that less than 2% of the Earth’s
surface is inhabited by humans.

“If we do nothing, I personally think we hit this tipping point,” Barnosky said.
And what does he, and his warmist compatriots, suggest we do? They want us to do what O is trying to do: cripple energy production (for no climate benefit!), and de-industrialize society.
Before this election, let the people know: What O and his band of misfits is now doing regarding energy, or plans or hopes to do, is a crime against humanity, no less. Quotes from my real science comment:
“…we came up with the idea that.. global warming..would fit the bill…….and thus the real enemy, then, is humanity itself…” -Club of Rome
“The planet is about to break out with fever.. and we [humans] are the disease. We should be at war with ourselves and our lifestyles.” -Thomas Lovejoy, The Smithsonian
“[the solution] is discipline, prohibition, oppression… [and] a centralized govt and the tireless control of citizens.” -Pentti Linkola, Finnish Ecologist
“It is a campaign not for abundance but for austerity. It is a campaign not for more freedom but for less. Strangest of all, it is a campaign not just against other people, but against ourselves.” -George Monbiot, Ecojournalist
“The urge to save humanity is almost always only a false face for the urge to rule it.” -H.L. Mencken

Apples and Oranges… Hundreds of thermometers in cooler areas have been eliminated, since the 60’s… What matters is the extreme high(and low) temperature charts as displayed in this article.
As you stated in the last paragraph, what a fun pile of data to sift through.
Hay someone got to do it it might as well be you Anthony.

In 2007, 2009 and 2012 I copy/pasted the daily record temps from the NWS. Some of a particular days record highs have been changed. Here are a couple of examples. The first is from the 2012. The second is from the 2007 list. There are at least 19 more “adjustments”. There’s even one where the record high for that day was set after the period the 2007 list covers but the new record high in the 2012 list is lower than that days temperature in the 2007 list. I don’t understand how that could be. (But, then again, I’ve never played on a hockey team.)
2012 List 2007 List
9-Jan 62 1946 Jan-09 65 1946
4-Feb 61 1962 Feb-04 66 1946

While I am on the subject. “Rampant population growth” ………..?????
“The actual annual growth in the number of humans fell from its peak of 88.0 million in 1989, to a low of 73.9 million in 2003, after which it rose again to 75.2 million in 2006. Since then, annual growth has declined. In 2009, the human population increased by 74.6 million, which is projected to fall steadily to about 41 million per annum in 2050, at which time the population will have increased to about 9.2 billion.[11] Each region of the globe has seen great reductions in growth rate in recent decades, though growth rates remain above 2% in some countries of the Middle East and Sub-Saharan Africa, and also in South Asia, Southeast Asia, and Latin America.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:World_population_growth_rate_1950%E2%80%932050.svg (That is a graph but I don’t know who to make it show up here.

From the “NOAA’s National Climatic Data Center caught cooling the past – modern processed records don’t match paper records” thread —SiliconDoc says:
June 8, 2012 at 3:42 pm
Well JB, they may believe with every ounce of their soul the world will soon reach the man made disaster tipping point and begin to overheat exponentially.
Doc wins the “Psychic of the Week” award…

Would it be a suprise if the twelve hottest days at any station in any year were consecutive. It would certainly be a suprise if they were evenly spread throughout the year. Why then should twelve consecutive years be anything unusual?

It seems like the AMO has quite an effect on temperatures in the US. The AMO index even seem to be growing according to the graphics represented at climate4you, and according to the evolving temperatures in the US. If this should be the case, no wonder the recent temperatures are high.
Here I have pasted one graph onto another, AMO and US temperatures. They seem to follow each other both in amplitude and in the derivation of time. Maybe your’e on a peak now or quite soon?https://docs.google.com/file/d/0BzE2_VqLf31cNjRNWEZOOV9HcEk/edit

Well, yes, sort of. Land temperatures are related to sea surface temperatures, given that Earth is mostly covered with water, there should be a coupling.
The PDO, being upwind of the US and larger than the Atlantic is also coupled. See these:http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/09/30/amopdo-temperature-variation-one-graph-says-it-all/
And an admonition about computing correlations after smoothing data and water/air coupling is athttp://wmbriggs.com/blog/?p=2952
The AMO has a major impact on Atlantic hurricanes and things like the North Atlantic Oscillation sometimes has a major impact on northeast winters.

Sometimes when I read something like this I just feel like giving up.
Invariably, 10-20 people will pop up to the lab or catch me at the proverbial water cooler/coffee maker concerned for the future of the planet having just read some such nonsense as this. Do I take the time to explain the Zohnerism, again? Do I go through how not only is it “consistent with” anthropogenic climate change but also natural climate change, and weather for that matter, not to mention alien invasion protocol 7B-2.4J (lol), again? Do I express my deep disappointment that those being called scientists that present only part of the data, (like a prosecuting attorney might) but real scientists (unlike these authors) do not, again?
I ask myself, is it worth it? Then I think of my children and grandchildren.
[Self- Snip] Skippy It’s Worth It!
We will fight them in individual conversations. [i.e.: The Scientifically Literate Populace]
We will fight them in small to large group discussions. [i.e.: Monckton; Heartland]
We will fight them in the press. [i.e.: Heartland, Tisdale, Morano]
We will fight them in the blog sphere. [i.e.: WUWT, JoNova, CA]
We will fight them in the peer-reviewed literature. [ i.e.: Christy, Spenser, Lindzen]
We would fight them in open debate but they’re too cowardly.
We will still fight them anywhere we can.
And NEVER, EVER, give up.

While May was only the second-warmest on record, it was still in the top third for monthly average temperatures, marking 12 consecutive months with temperatures in that range, said Jake Crouch, a NOAA climate scientist.
“For that to happen 12 times in a row in a random circumstance is one in 540,000,” he said.

Not to be nitpicking or anything, I take that back – I am nitpicking.
For something to be in the top third 12 times in a row, the odds are 1 in 3^12, and 3^12 is 531,441. He can’t help it – NOAA climate scientists always round up. 🙂
Curiously enough, to have 12 months all in the middle third is odds of 1 in 531,441, and gosh, for them to be in the lowest is also 1 in 531,441.
Of course, on this planet months are short enough so usually one month is not random compared to another month, but when there’s hype to be made, I guess it’s gotta be made, if you’re a NOAA climate scientist. And when you’re comparing to all of the 20th century, well, I think we’re still recovering from the Little Ice Age on top of various human related warming processes and it’s a lot more likely to have twelve months in a row in the warmest third than the coolest third.
I still haven’t quite figured out what point tips when we reach a tipping point. From the full article, it doesn’t seem to be that we turn into another Venus. I think that’s what the early tipping point was. We seem to have one tipping point per NOAA climate scientist now.

Spring is not so warm when I still have my heat on in June. We were supposed to come back from the Bahamas at the end of April. I changed our return to the end of May as Southern Ontario was having “winter snow storms” at the end of April. We came home on May 25th which was a nice warm afternoon but i could feel the cold air coming in the windows that night. Woke up the next morning, screaming, as it was 14 C and I hadn’t turned the heat on. The heat is still on. I have lived through June’s where the heat was not on and it was warm. That is not happening this year. Last year was cold also. Yes, I know, temperature is regional. The fact that some of the US is enjoying a warm spring while the rest of the globe shivers is not a tipping point.

Another example of gruesome statistics misuse:
Jake Crouch, a NOAA climate scientist…“For that to happen 12 times in a row in a random circumstance is one in 540,000,” he said.
The statement implies a normal and random distribution, neither of which apply.That has been discussed above by other WUWT readers. A scientist who does not apply the correct statistical procedures is not a scientist.
So do I believe that the result claimed was “just random natural temperature swings?” Not in a million years. After studying WUWT (and other sources) for over a year, I attribute this this warming trend, not to any real improvement in temperature (and it would be good news if true), nor to any part of CAGW, but to cherry picking the data, cherry picking the comparison points (top third of months), elimination of the coldest 2/3 of the weather stations, urban heat island and other machinations to fight the cognitive dissonance that would occur should Jake ever take a genuinely scientific look at the data.

Remember ‘food’? We eat is sometimes.
I am not sure if you all heard that the extraordinary cold during fruit tree flowering in the NE US and Southern Ontario has killed about 80% of the fruit crop in the bud, literally. Our apple tree has only two apples this year, both nestled inside the densest leaf cover. Cold killed the rest of the flowers. What survives will be marked or stunted or both.
I am not sure if the cold was ‘record’ but the losses will be. Over $100m it is said. It is warm now – already better than the whole of 2010 – but the birds are nesting late. Bad sign. The long term records show no change in decades. But we still need to eat.

“For that to happen 12 times in a row in a random circumstance is one in 540,000,”
Well, yeah, maybe so. But if you actually look at climatic “circumstances”, you notice that they’re not “random circumstances” but parts of a curve made up of a lot of cycles and other influences, mostly related to our little planet’s being part of a big solar system trundling around our local galaxy. But of course 12 high readings on a curve which has been trending gently upwards for over a century is … (yawn) … really no more than you’d expect.
Next? (says he, knowing full well there’ll be one …) (okay, lots …)

A shift in the biosphere is possible by 2100 if nothing is done to better predict changes and act upon them,
=====
A hundred years ago…..people were complaining about the cold…..I don’t remember anyone complaining about the increase in biodiversity

Here, May was a bit above average on temp, but June has been very pleasant. That’s the weather for ya. Systems come and systems go but unless you have observed a complete synchronous cycle of all the natural patterns (probably in the 60 to 25000 year range {slight sarc on the width of the range}) can you really attribute today’s temperature to any particular parameter at all? You can guess, and you can probably eliminate many variables, but to say “these two things right here cause all of this” is preposterous!

Am I wrong or didn’t a whole swag of some of the coldest weather reporting stations just disappear following the collapse of the Soviet Union ?
That in itself would cause a warm bias in modern records if the old Soviet Bloc (presumably some of the coldest) records are still in the historical dataset.

@DiskoTroop
The 43% figure for “disrupted” land surface comes from the following paper which I’ll admit that I have not read.http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v486/n7401/full/nature11018.html
Still, from the abstract there is a lot of discussion of something called “state shift”. I would hope their paper gives us a complete run down of how they might determine “state shift” as well as how much “state shift” nature is applying and how much humans are applying. My quick analysis of the abstract indicates to me that none of this has been done and we most likely have a case of some sort of back room conjuring of which in the Journal Nature 50 years ago would have been immediately tossed out as junk science.
Bernie

Steven Kopits says:
June 9, 2012 at 10:41 am
For those interested in the topic: An article on the economics of self-driving electric vehicles I wrote for Foreign Policy:
“How the Electric, Self-Driving Miracle Car Will Change Your Life”http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2012/06/08/self_driving_car?page=0,0
_____________________________________
I had a “Self driving” vehicle for about twenty years. A pair of Saddlebred mares trained to voice commands. Top speed 15 MPH and would do 40 miles on a bale of hay easy.

Caleb says:
June 9, 2012 at 11:06 am
I thought Hansens email was more recent. It’s from 2007. Lord knows how many readjusted adjusted adjustments have occurred since then.
_______________________________________
Hansen is really good at doing adjustments GRAPHS

My reply to Hansen: So what ?
It snowed today in Montana (9 June, 2012). Not especially unusual, but this has not been a warm spring.
In case you had not noticed, you sorry excuse for a scientist, weather is not climate and even 40 years of weather is not climate either, imo. Get back to me after you stop ‘adjusting’ the numbers and collect more than N=1 samples per site-sample.

atheok says:
June 9, 2012 at 11:36 am
I almost posted this on the UAH temp thread.
I finally moved my orchid plants outside two weeks ago here in the mid-atlantic. …
…. April may have been warm, but where I live, May was downright chilly.
I don’t doubt that May was warm for some folks, makes me wonder just which stations got rolled into the May temp.
_______________________________
I am in North Carolina and it has been down right chilly (54F last night) In May we only had one day at 91F vs the 17 days over 90F with 2 at 98F in 2004. Warm?? not yet.
You can see we have not been exactly warm for the last few years: http://data.giss.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/gistemp/gistemp_station.py?id=425746930020&data_set=1&num_neighbors=1
We are about at the same temperatures as we were 100 years ago.

Steven Kopits says:
June 9, 2012 at 10:41 am
For those interested in the topic: An article on the economics of self-driving electric vehicles I wrote for Foreign Policy:
“How the Electric, Self-Driving Miracle Car Will Change Your Life”http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2012/06/08/self_driving_car?page=0,0
*****************************************************************************
I read your article. It won’t work for a very simple reason. It requires people to schedule all their transportation. Life and schedules are not a good fit for the vast majority of people. Schedules are a unwanted restriction on our time and freedom. The advantage of personal gas vehicles is that they do not require scheduling.

An Ag newsletter item related to the recent freeze warnings and record lows we’ve been having.
The situation in 2012 looks even more grim than 2002. Very early warmth has resulted in bud phenology stages commonly analogous to early May, but occurring in late March. The best experience suggests that there will be shoot mortality on vines, but let us respond to that condition with careful assessment, and not fall prey to collective hysteria. The worst case may be true! But let’s have valid answers supporting that situation before we decide to make decisions regarding the coming season’s culture.

I want to know what happened the LAST time reached a global tipping point for atmospheric carbon concentrations?
Was that the period in time that was SO conducive to life that butterflies had 2′ wingspans, and some cats were as big as small horses? Or did the gradual warming cause a gradual cooling?
And for the love of chocolate, will SOMEBODY please tell me how during the ice age, the water vaporized from the oceans onto the continents? (And please note that vaporization is a process associated with heat.)

Part of the CONUS has been above average over the past six months. The rest of the world? meh…not so much. I love how warmists will challenge the claim of temps plateauing over a decade meaning nothing as the time period is too short to show any trend, yet barely 12 months of above average weather in 2% of the globe and we are all going to be heat casualties as soon as we step out of the house. That is of course if the massive forest fires, F5 tornados, or floods don’t get you first.

During World War I about one million acres of grassland in western Nebraska, better suited to grazing than to crops, was plowed under and planted. In the 1920s farmers were so desperate to increase income that they over plowed, over planted, and over grazed the land on the Great Plains…. http://www.livinghistoryfarm.org/farminginthe30s/crops_09.html

“The pattern we’ve been in for the last 12 months is exactly what we would expect in climate change,”
If one averages the GISS anomalies for the 12 month period from May 2011 to April 2012, the average is 0.491. And an anomaly of 0.491 in the GISS record makes it the 10th warmest.

Here in the mountains of South Colorado, I cannot even say if it’s warm or cold. The problem is, lately temperatures here vary from about 4°C to 28°C every day, so every time I have to work all night (which happens often) I start freezing in the wee hours of the morning, though right now, at 19:00, it feels like cold beer is in order. Spring was certainly mostly colder than usual. Swedes and Russians are complaining about a very late summer this year. Maybe James Hansen should move to Stockholm for a year or two, to cool down a bit and gather his thoughts.

There seems to be a subtle change in focus with the indoctrination campaign: the ‘warming’ message is still the same, but someone has perhaps developed a bit of concience regarding the ‘science’ behind the logic of of their causation. Perhaps the CO2 driver is running out of steam?:RAMPANT POPULATION GROWTH AND CHANGES TO THE ENVIRONMENT CAUSED BY HUMANS, including the burning of fossil fuels AND THE CONVERSION OF NEARLY 43% OF THE PLANET’S LAND TO FARMS OR CITIES, threaten to cause an abrupt and unpredictable shift in the global ecosystem, 22 scientists from five countries said in their paper.

cui bono says:
June 9, 2012 at 11:28 am
Can anyone explain the mechanism whereby AGW creates more blocking highs? /sarc
———————
So you assume there isn’t one. Bad idea to make assumptions based on ignorance. And then you make a smart-arsed comment based on that ignorance. Even less wise because someone who is not ignorant may actually know that there is a reason why global warming causes blocking highs.
I don’t know if the frequency of blocking highs is affected by global warming or not. I do know there is some evidence and argument that less arctic ice is allowing more cold weather systems to penetrate south at greater frequency.
I do know that confusing secondary and primary causes leads to logical fallacies.

Rosco says:
June 9, 2012 at 3:22 pm
Am I wrong or didn’t a whole swag of some of the coldest weather reporting stations just disappear following the collapse of the Soviet Union ?
That in itself would cause a warm bias in modern records if the old Soviet Bloc (presumably some of the coldest) records are still in the historical dataset.
————–
Your wrong. It’s the temperature trend at each station that is important. It’s actual local average temperature is irrelevant.

@ markx says:
June 9, 2012 at 6:09 pm
There seems to be a subtle change in focus with the indoctrination campaign: the ‘warming’ message is still the same, but someone has perhaps developed a bit of concience regarding the ‘science’ behind the logic of of their causation. Perhaps the CO2 driver is running out of steam?:
RAMPANT POPULATION GROWTH AND CHANGES TO THE ENVIRONMENT CAUSED BY HUMANS, including the burning of fossil fuels AND THE CONVERSION OF NEARLY 43% OF THE PLANET’S LAND TO FARMS OR CITIES, threaten to cause an abrupt and unpredictable shift in the global ecosystem, 22 scientists from five countries said in their paper.
*********************************************************************
Be careful what you say on the monitored public internet about such things. You might get a visit from armed EPA agents, as this fellow did:
“The North Carolina man visited by armed EPA agents after sending an email to a controversial agency official says he not satisfied with the explanations about what he considers an excessive response and that he wants changes to agency policies and procedures.
“This isn’t over,” Keller said.
He told Fox News.com that Environmental Protection Agency officials have said the agency followed procedures and that the agents acted appropriately during their visit last month. However, Keller is still invited to come to EPA headquarters to discuss the situation.
Keller said he’s not willing to come to Washington without knowing what will be discussed.
The incident unfolded after Keller sent an email April 27 to the EPA to try to reach Al Armendariz — a regional administrator who was under fire for a YouTube video post days earlier in which he said his enforcement strategy was to “crucify” executives from big oil and gas companies.
The letter to an EPA external affairs director read “Do you have Mr. Armendariz’s contact information so we can say hello? – Regards- Larry Keller.”
Keller said he was just asking as a taxpayer and denies being part of the Tea Party, though he acknowledges supporting the movement’s calls to defund the agency in part because it has outreached its intended mission.”
Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2012/06/09/man-visited-by-armed-epa-agents-not-satisfied-with-answers-wants-agency-changes/#ixzz1xLksodyt

Buried in the report they link to (http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/sotc/national/2012/5), they have charts all over the place.
Just one can be used to put some things in perspective, found on this page:
(http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/temp-and-precip/uspa/?ar ea=warm-cold&year=2012&month=5)
It has this caption:
“…The percentage areas of the contiguous United States are computed based on the climate division data set. Those climate divisions having the monthly average temperature in the top ten percent (> 90th percentile) of their historical distribution are very warm and those in the bottom ten percent (< 10th percentile) are very cold…"
The chart at the bottom of the plot tells something interesting – so far, in 2012, they're showing 47.88% very warm, and 0% very cold.
But before people can jump for joy at the "0% very cold", an obvious sign of CAGW, look at the other years that had no "very cold" for the entire year:
1902, 0%
1922, 0%
1934, 0%
1939, 0%
1949, 0%
1951, 0%
1985, 0%
1986, 0%
2000, 0%
2001, 0%
So if we only see ONE area fall into the "very cold" column this year, we won't tie with the previous 10 unprecedented times it's happened.
So what about the other end? The very warm?
Well, the current value of 47.88% for the first part of 2012 is exceeded by a value of 56.10% the entire year of 1896. We might break that this year.
But, since we're looking at extremes we see that the following years had zero in the VERY WARM column:
1909, 1917, 1923, 1929, 1945, 1961, 1967, 1968, 1971.
Really shows the variability of climate. Especially since the values of the "very warm" have had relatively decreasing values for the last few years (since the "warmest ever" year of 1998):
1998 40.34%
1999 4.10%
2000 33.98%
2001 25.34%
2002 8.02%
2003 15.86%
2004 27.89%
2005 2.94%
2006 23.68%
2007 13.59%
2008 3.99%
2009 21.13%
2010 15.50%
2011 2.46%
So as of now, we're showing up as the warmest since 1998. But still have some way to go before we hit the warmest since records began.
The second thing they like to hang on to is their "It was the (fill in the blank) consecutive month that global temperatures exceeded the 20th-century average, NOAA said."
Let's see. The 20th century is defined as the time period running from January 1, 1901 to December 31, 2000 (which doesn't include the last 12 years). NOAA's "20th century average" works out to be 51.9 degrees F (deduced from this statement "…The national temperature of 57.1 degrees F during spring was 5.2 degrees F above the long-term average…").
Also, their 326th month means it was 27.16 years ago, or in 1985.
How does the other premier data-set, GISS, fall in with this "record"?
First, their data states "…Best estimate for absolute global mean for 1951-1980 is 57.2 deg-F…"
So when the climate data center said the average U.S. temperature between March and May was 57.1 degrees, that's .1 degree COLDER than a 30 year GLOBAL mean in the middle of the 20th century.
GISS's "30 year global mean" of 57.2 deg F compared to NDCC's "20th century average" of 51.9 deg F.
People using different averaging periods sure makes "record" keeping complicated, doesn't it?

Steve O says
And for the love of chocolate, will SOMEBODY please tell me how during the ice age, the water vaporized from the oceans onto the continents? (And please note that vaporization is a process associated with heat.)
—————–
Because the earth still receives very nearly the same amount of radiation from the sun. Over the UN-frozen oceans that radiation is still absorbed and converted to heat so water still evaporates. Over the frozen continents it’s a different matter as the ice reflects the incoming radiation and so the ice stays cold.
Please send chocolate.

What is is about the number 43? Seems every cataclysmic prediction is somehow related to 43: “You will be 43 times more likely to shoot yourself if you have a gun in the house…43% of the earth, blah, blah,. I though 42 was the answer to life, the universe and everything!

While May was only the second-warmest on record, it was still in the top third for monthly average temperatures, marking 12 consecutive months with temperatures in that range, said Jake Crouch, a NOAA climate scientist.>>>>
Well Jake, lemme splain somethin’ to ya.
Suppose I climb a hill, and when I get to the top, I turns me around and starts back down. Every step, I measure the altitude. After 12 steps on the way down, I point out to me buds that of the last 24 steps in a row, all 24 were in the highest 1/3 of all the steps we took. Based on that, looks like the trend is for us to wind up even higher than the top of the hill, walking on air.
Fact of the matter is that the earth has been warming up since the Little Ice Age. So, having the last few years/months/days or seconds all in the top third of temperatures means….nothing. The earth goes through warming and cooling cycles, it has been through them before, it has been both warmer and cooler than it is now, and which ever way the pendulum swings, it must always swing back. It isn’t possible for us to climb a hill and just keep climbing when we get to the top. Earth’s temperature is the same. It isn’t some linear line that can just be followed into orbit. Unless the amount of energy from the sun being absorbed changes substantively, the average temperature of the earth CANNOT change substantively. Either that, or everything we thing we know about physics is wrong.
It takes just 2.9 wattts/m2 to raise the temperature from -40C to -39C.
It takes 7.0 watts/m2 to raise the temperature from +40 to 41C.
Thars the problem the alarmists don’t want to talk about. The earth’s temperature is like a hill. The higher you go, the harder it is to go still higher. At some point you reach a maximum. To exceed the maximum, you have to add more energy to the system, or pile more dirt up on the top of the hill. Both require extraordinary measures to go beyond naturally imposed limits, and pretending that there is some sort of linear trend signified by 12 of the last years/months.days/weeks/seconds being in the “top third” is just to totaly meaningless that Jake Crouch should be embarrased.

After some effort to collect and verify the data, the following is a relatively concise and fairly accurate accounting of the 29.2% of the planet’s “land” surface:
Arable Land 10.6% with 4.71% actually in annual crops – this latter part = a human state shift
Permanent Pastures 26% most natural with some small part having a human state shift
Forest and Woodlands 32% with some small fraction having some positive and some negative human state shift
Urban Areas = 2.4% likely but a liberal interpretation = 3% (much of these urban areas have green belts, parks, vacant lots, rivers etc – they are not all concrete and steel)
Other (deserts, tundra, permanent ice, mountains-above timberline etc.) 29% with some minor human state shift
Direct human impact = 4.71+3= 7.71%
Some human state shift (not sure how to define or quantify this value in the other biomes) but if we discuss some noticeable human impact to uncultivated arable land, pastures, forests, woodlands and other, we might be talking about a few % each with a total of perhaps 10%
The CIA Factbook used the above categories of land which turns out to be widely accepted. We know that pastures, some forests and woodlands, urban areas, and even deserts could be developed into arable land but simply by definition those land areas are not considered as arable here.
Most of the countries in the northern hemisphere have been improving these pastures, forests, woodlands, deserts etc. and protecting even the most remote of other types of biomes. China is doing a lot to improve these biomes. Africa, India, and some countries in SE Asia and S. America are struggling with this problem of “state shift”. These struggling countries all have some things in common. Primarily serious poverty and/or large populations.
Major to medium impact is 7.71% – this is fairly well documented
Noticeable to minor impact is 10% – this needs some serious work
17.71% of human impact to the planet’s land surface that goes from major to very minor impact.
It should not take a $1 Million study to start to seriously quantify the true extent of human impact to uncultivated arable land, pastures, forests, woodlands, and other (is it greater than 10% of the land surface and can we determine some sort of level of seriousness of the impact?). Did these 22 scientists do this? Not with a shotgun value of 43% and not by defining the impact with such a fuzzy term as state shift.
Recently about half of the world’s 7 billion population lived in urban areas and half in areas of very low population density. The increasing shift from rural areas to urban areas is expected to accelerate over the next forty years when population is expected to be about 9 billion. Size of urban areas will slowly increase but density is expected to increase more dramatically. World rate of population growth has continued to decrease from about 2% in 1960 to about 1% at the present time (even as the total population has dramatically gone up).
Bernie

Oh for the purists and those who wish to see the above percentages add up to 100% take the 0.6% value I added to the original 2.4% of urban and area (to total 3%) and subtract a few tenths of a percent equally from arable land, pastures, forests and other and it will total 100%. This will probably be the mechanism for growth that will occur in the next 40 or 50 years as the 2.4% increases to ? Maybe 5%?
Bernie

LazyTeenager says:
June 9, 2012 at 6:24 pm
“I don’t know if the frequency of blocking highs is affected by global warming or not. I do know there is some evidence and argument that less arctic ice is allowing more cold weather systems to penetrate south at greater frequency.”
==
Indeed you know zip about atmospheric circulation, but you parrot anything to support your ignorance, such as warm air displace colder, denser air… At this level, go back to highschool.

LazyTeenager;
Your wrong. It’s the temperature trend at each station that is important. It’s actual local average temperature is irrelevant.>>>>
NOT! At -40C, it takes 2,89 watts/m2 to raise the temperature one degree. At +40C, it takes 6.99 watts/m2 to raise the temperature one degree. If CO2 increases create a measurable energy imbalance, then the temperature range of the weather stations lost versus the average temperature range most certainly IS important. One degree in a cold place and one degree in a warm place mean two totaly different things from an energy balance perspective.
Which you ought to understand given that you lectured me in another thread to the effect that CO2 does NOT change the energy balance of the earth system over all.

@lazyteenager
I am not sure what the article says but the Nature Abstract indicates that these folks are talking about 43% of the planet’s land biomes which I interpret as also being land surface percentage. It will reach 50% in a few years (their graphics can’t be blown up and I am not getting any younger!).
Bernie

LazyTeenager: “Your wrong. It’s the temperature trend at each station that is important. It’s actual local average temperature is irrelevant.”
That would be true if there was a thermometer reporting all the time from the same location every year.
Say you choose Moskva from the GIS station selector. 18 out of 30 have data to 2012. All with various start dates. If the dropped stations had a shallower, flat or cooling trend, and the only ones left in GIS have a warming trend, you can manipulate the trend.

LazyTeenager says:
June 9, 2012 at 6:51 pm
Mark Wagner says:
June 9, 2012 at 6:00 pm
43% of the planet’s land is cities or farmland? Geez. Just look at a map!
———–
“Geeez just read the article. It’s not 43% of the total land area.”
You are absolutely right, it says “nearly” 43%. You make a convincing case.

SAID HANRAHAN by John O’Brien
“We’ll all be rooned,” said Hanrahan,
In accents most forlorn,
Outside the church, ere Mass began,
One frosty Sunday morn.
The congregation stood about,
Coat-collars to the ears,
And talked of stock, and crops, and drought,
As it had done for years.
“It’s looking crook,” said Daniel Croke;
“Bedad, it’s cruke, me lad,
For never since the banks went broke
Has seasons been so bad.”
“It’s dry, all right,” said young O’Neil,
With which astute remark
He squatted down upon his heel
And chewed a piece of bark.
And so around the chorus ran
“It’s keepin’ dry, no doubt.”
“We’ll all be rooned,” said Hanrahan,
“Before the year is out.”
“The crops are done; ye’ll have your work
To save one bag of grain;
From here way out to Back-o’-Bourke
They’re singin’ out for rain.
“They’re singin’ out for rain,” he said,
“And all the tanks are dry.”
The congregation scratched its head,
And gazed around the sky.
“There won’t be grass, in any case,
Enough to feed an ass;
There’s not a blade on Casey’s place
As I came down to Mass.”
“If rain don’t come this month,” said Dan,
And cleared his throat to speak –
“We’ll all be rooned,” said Hanrahan,
“If rain don’t come this week.”
A heavy silence seemed to steal
On all at this remark;
And each man squatted on his heel,
And chewed a piece of bark.
“We want an inch of rain, we do,”
O’Neil observed at last;
But Croke “maintained” we wanted two
To put the danger past.
“If we don’t get three inches, man,
Or four to break this drought,
We’ll all be rooned,” said Hanrahan,
“Before the year is out.”
In God’s good time down came the rain;
And all the afternoon
On iron roof and window-pane
It drummed a homely tune.
And through the night it pattered still,
And lightsome, gladsome elves
On dripping spout and window-sill
Kept talking to themselves.
It pelted, pelted all day long,
A-singing at its work,
Till every heart took up the song
Way out to Back-o’-Bourke.
And every creek a banker ran,
And dams filled overtop;
“We’ll all be rooned,” said Hanrahan,
“If this rain doesn’t stop.”
And stop it did, in God’s good time;
And spring came in to fold
A mantle o’er the hills sublime
Of green and pink and gold.
And days went by on dancing feet,
With harvest-hopes immense,
And laughing eyes beheld the wheat
Nid-nodding o’er the fence.
And, oh, the smiles on every face,
As happy lad and lass
Through grass knee-deep on Casey’s place
Went riding down to Mass.
While round the church in clothes genteel
Discoursed the men of mark,
And each man squatted on his heel,
And chewed his piece of bark.
“There’ll be bush-fires for sure, me man,
There will, without a doubt;
We’ll all be rooned,” said Hanrahan,
“Before the year is out.”

Rampant population growth and changes to the environment caused by humans, including the burning of fossil fuels and the conversion of nearly 43% of the planet’s land to farms or cities, threaten to cause an abrupt and unpredictable shift in the global ecosystem, 22 scientists from five countries said in their paper.
What that says is that there are 22 scientists from five countries who have either never gone anywhere by airplane or, if they have, been curious enough to look out the window.

Earlier today, in a posting about a related topic (the “Santa Ana” winds we had here in eastern Nebraska today (yeah, I know, wrong time of year( I said:

“And we might have a “you read it first here” item. When we moved here in late 1989 and for the next several years, the summers were blistering hot (I remember things like roto-tilling a garden in 120°, windy weather–like plowing manhole covers fresh from the foundry) and the winters were bitterly cold (I seem to remember -17° being a popular number)–some with ice, some with snow, some without much of either).
I wonder if the machine is moving away from the mild-summer — mild-winter part of the cycle.”

LazyTeenager says:
June 9, 2012 at 6:24 pm
cui bono says:
June 9, 2012 at 11:28 am
Can anyone explain the mechanism whereby AGW creates more blocking highs? /sarc
———————
So you assume there isn’t one. Bad idea to make assumptions based on ignorance. And then you make a smart-arsed comment based on that ignorance.
And you — as evidenced by your smart-arsed comment — are assuming there *is* one, even though there’s no evidence of that.

I have a problem with the way NOAA/NCDC deems a weather event to be “extreme” and uses this to declaring the climate of the US to be getting more extreme: they treat a very high temperature anomaly for January the same as they would one for July, worse yet, they treat strong warming of daily mins in winter the same as they would a similar change in daily maxes in July. But the truth is that only the latter in each case could reasonably be said to be a move of the climate towards more extremes, and even then only assuming the former, in each case, wasn’t happening at least as much. The truth, which NOAA’s “Climate Extremes Index” doesn’t recognize, is that the warming of the US in the last thirty years was highly concentrated on the coldest days of the year, indicating that the temperature extremes in the US have, in net, gone down. And now they will take our rare but natural temperature spike in recent months and it is a HUGE spike in the “Climate Extremes Index” already.

Bernie McCune says:
June 9, 2012 at 8:07 pm
“I am not sure what the article says but the Nature Abstract indicates that these folks are talking about 43% of the planet’s land biomes which I interpret as also being land surface percentage. It will reach 50% in a few years (their graphics can’t be blown up and I am not getting any younger!).”
I do not see that in the abstract provided free from Nature. But one of the co-authors, Nick Matzke, said on the Panda’s Thumb:
“Humans are also engaging in massive external forcing of ecosystems, first by direct conversion (43% of the Earth’s land surface has already been converted to agricultural use) and second by raising the average global temperature, which forces species to either adapt, migrate, or go extinct. Raising the global CO2 level has effects beyond temperature change, notably raising the acidity of the ocean.”http://pandasthumb.org/archives/2012/06/predicting-a-st.html
They may be right, if they include such use as 2 cows per section grazing land, tree farms, unused fields, and the occasional poppy picking in the Himalayas.
Sounds like a scary story to frighten children, not all agricultural activities contribute to (wink wink) naughty forcing of ecosystems. Neither does all agriculture force species to do undesirable naughty things to the ecosystem.

QuantumPhysicistPhil says
Don’t pay attention to these anti-science blowhards, the real physics say otherwise. The global temperature seems ready to tank within the next few years, 2012 should be our last ‘warm’ year.
Henry@Phil
Phill, it seems you have a source similar to mine. Let me know which is yours?
I can give you better than 2012. I say we are already cooling since the beinning of this century. And I don’t trust the satellite values anymore. (precision? accuracy? error? calibration ? representation of all the earth?)
I can give you the development of warming/cooling over time.
See here:http://www.letterdash.com/henryp/global-cooling-is-here
Note that the sample is well balanced by latitude and 70/30 sea – inland
Personally I think the climate is on this curve:http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2010/04/orssengo3.png
Study this curve carefully and you will see that around 1994 temps went down (negative/decline) as correctly predicted by me. However, Orssengo thought the max would be at around 2000. That means his curve must be shifted a bit to the left.
Is Orssengo still alive?
Overall, we cooled by about 0.2 degrees K since 2000.
That does not yet look like a lot. In fact, showing the difference between the walls inside my house of 0.5 degrees C, my son laughed at me worrying about the 0.2 degree cooling. But remember, this is just a global average. In places like Kimberley (South Africa) the average temps. fell by as much as 1.5 sdegrees C since the beginning of this century. It shows when you fly over Kimberley. It looks more desolate now than ever before. The problem is that the cooling is not linear. It is on a curve and it is headed further down.
Maxima are falling now by about 0.2 degrees K per annum (r2 = 0.997) and the average temps are falling by almost 0.1 degree per annum (r2 = 0.95)http://www.letterdash.com/henryp/global-cooling-is-here
We are heading for disaster (i.e. real climate change due to natural circumstances ) and these clowns all over the place keep telling us earth is still warming.

Lower elevation and their higher temperatures, are common since 1990 in the data. The Andes, e.g., have almost vanished. And LT, no, the “trend” is not immune, since these are grouped into blocs, and each bloc suffers from the data corruption individually. (Not that “averaging” of temperatures is a valid procedure in the first place.)

Glenn says:
June 9, 2012 at 11:16 pm
I do not see that in the abstract provided free from Nature. But one of the co-authors, Nick Matzke, said on the Panda’s Thumb:
“Humans are also engaging in massive external forcing of ecosystems, first by direct conversion (43% of the Earth’s land surface has already been converted to agricultural use)…”
Well, if he’s not counting that part of the Earth’s surface that’s desert, forest, mountains, double- and triple canopy jungle, tundra, prairie, or swampland — nah. Still doesn’t add up.

And just to ballance things up, the city of Christchurch here in New Zealand set a new “low high,” last week for any day in the last 130 years since records have been kept there. 0.4 degrees C. They aslo copped a great amount of ‘glowbull warming’ that closed schools and roads as well as causing power loses to thousands of homes in the South Island. Some weather analysts here have predicted a repeat of the almost nation wide snow events similar to that experienced last August in New Zealand. That would put things on a par with events in the 1930’s.
Cheers
Coops

I think Glenn and Bill Tuttle are locating some interesting discrepancies in the discussions of these scientists versus the reality of what we can actually see in the world.
Bill Tuttle says:
June 10, 2012 at 2:59 am
Glenn says:
June 9, 2012 at 11:16 pm
I do not see that in the abstract provided free from Nature. But one of the co-authors, Nick Matzke, said on the Panda’s Thumb:
“Humans are also engaging in massive external forcing of ecosystems, first by direct conversion (43% of the Earth’s land surface has already been converted to agricultural use)…”
Well, if he’s not counting that part of the Earth’s surface that’s desert, forest, mountains, double- and triple canopy jungle, tundra, prairie, or swampland — nah. Still doesn’t add up.
@Glenn
The tiny graphic with the Abstract shows some of the genesis of the 43% value. Hard to see.
Arable land is about 10% of the land surface with less than half of it in annual cultivation. The meaning of agricultural land may be stretched to include forest products and use of pastures but to believe Nick Matzke’s statement that “43% of the earth’s land surface has already been converted to agricultural use . . ” requires some sort of solid citation rather than an odd quote like “humans are engaging in massive external forcing of ecosystems”. In my opinion, scientists gathering to brainstorm “solutions” to problems need to be very careful about reporting their findings to the media. Folks tossing these bits of ill informed “facts” out there for CNN or Rueters to pick up are not promoting solutions but rather creating more problems.
I have no respect and cannot “believe” any of these so called scientists anymore. Fortunately science is not a belief system so unless these folks can show me the data, they are wasting my time.
Bernie

There is another temperature picture that Hansen does not give . According to NOAA/NCDC in the Contiguous US since 1998, the year to date , annual , winter,spring and fall temperatures all show declining temperature trends . Only the summer shows a rising trend . In Canada since 1998 the annual,summer and fall linear tempertaure deviations from 1961-1990 averages show completely flat linear trends . The spring temperature trend is falling . Only the winter temperature trend shows a rise mostly due to last year’s warm winter , otherewise it also was flat up to 2011. Regionally and annually of the 11 regions in Canada according to Environment Canada , 7 regions show declining temperature deviations , 2 are flat and only 2 are up[ mostly high Arctic . ] So according to my analysis there is no overall warming trend or tipping point present in the North American temperature trends . Lets keep things in proper perspective .

“the conversion of nearly 43% of the planet’s land to farms or cities”
no way. the total land area of the planet is 57,308,738 Sq. Miles.
but alinsky recommended absurdity as a means outrage in order to validate the troll’s credentials by the emetic effect on rational persons in his book Rules for Trolls.

How can you trust these guys when they can’t even do a standard probability calculation. 12 times in a row of any 50/50 odds is 1 in 4096 not 1 in 540000 so they are out by more than 2 orders of magnitude before they even start – just nuts.

Hansen’s comment about looking at the global temperature record is revealing. It is this which is in the hands of the very climate scientists who have been predicting Global Warming.
Consider this.
– We have strict audit controls in accountancy, because we know that of conflicts of interest in business producing their profit measures. They may profit from misdirecting others, like shareholders and tax authorities.
– We have strict regulations on testing pharmaceuticals, as companies may exaggerate the benefits and understate harmful side effects.
– In national statistics, we do not view as reliable figures which are not produced by an independent statistics bureau.
So why should we consider reliable global temperature figures be any different?
Comparehttp://www.economist.com/node/21548229
the contact details at this site – http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/

Whenever a skeptic quoted 1934 as ‘the warmest year’ the AGW proponents howled them down saying but that was only the USA it was not the hottest year globally! So now we get to a similar position again – and all of a sudden the AGW requirement for the heat to be global is dropped? How very climate scientist of them.

Steven Kopits says:
June 9, 2012 at 10:41 am
“How the Electric, Self-Driving Miracle Car Will Change Your Life”http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2012/06/08/self_driving_car?page=0,0
. . . And save the world.
A: Did you write the title and the sub-head, also? Because those of us beyond retirement age and living in rural areas will need a miracle to see much change in our lives from electric vehicles. Mostly these things will belong to the next generation.
B: However, a group of people that cannot drive but generally function well (poor visual capability being just one reason), could benefit greatly by a fleet of small self-driving vehicles. Locally, a subsidized small bus (~24 seater) can pick people up for shopping, doctors visits, and so on – with a severely restricted schedule. Weekends and evenings – say for a free concert at the local university – are not serviced. So bring these things on. Use the money now going to supporting the CAGW agenda.
C: Batteries need to be handled like a tank of gas. Build a battery plaza or Miracle Car Emporium (MCE) for “on the fly” exchange of power packs. Without the cost of buying an expensive and “rapidly” changing component — these vehicles would have a better chance. A breakthrough in battery technology would have no consequences for the owner of the car. The Better Place station is a prototype:http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,2066975,00.html
D: Pickup trucks (common in rural areas) ought to have a solar-panel canopy fully wrap-around to charge the battery. For a full sized pickup that would be about 80 sq. feet of collector. Develop a spray-on collector. Cost should not be more than the 3-layer fancy paint jobs called “pearls.”http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pearlescent_coating

John F. Hultquist says:
June 10, 2012 at 7:47 am
D: Pickup trucks (common in rural areas) ought to have a solar-panel canopy fully wrap-around to charge the battery. For a full sized pickup that would be about 80 sq. feet of collector. Develop a spray-on collector. Cost should not be more than the 3-layer fancy paint jobs called “pearls.”
If you’re talking about a camper-type outsert for a pickup’s bed, between gravel, dust, and errant tree limbs, most solar-types around my neck of the woods would be completely destroyed within a few weeks. They might do well in the UCLA* area, though.
*Upper Central Lower Alabama

Brian H says:
June 9, 2012 at 11:55 pm
Bill;
Since AGW lives exclusively in GCMs, there may very well be a mechanism therein which emulates causation of blocking highs.
AGW in my Gun Control Module?!? So *that* explains why my M134’s dispersion has been all over the map!

Curiousgeorge says:June 9, 2012 at 6:36 pm
“@ markx ……Be careful what you say …”
Thanks for the warning George, but I don’t think my comment implies ANY sort of ‘threat’. Not that I’d construe Keller’s statement as a threat either, but I’ve expressed no desire to ‘meet’ anyone.

I agree with what Hansen says if you remove the implication that only ‘contrarians’ cherry pick data.
The statement of one year’s data being quite noisy holds for warmistas too.
Quite frankly, the fact that it has been ‘quite warm’ the past 10 years is, in real times, climatological noise too.
The public have been blitzed with the notion that a decade is enough for a ‘tipping point’, when science would indicate that it is nothing of the sort. A tipping point may come within a decade, but a decade may not be enough for a tipping point. Pretty simple really: it depends on the data.
First question: what defines a ‘tipping point’?
Second question: what degree of certainty in ascribing a ‘tipping point’ is a suitably scientific certainty?
Third question: how rigorous is the calculation of ‘certainty’??
Not much for Mr Hansen to answer there, is there????

KnR says:Once again we find that weather is climate but only if it helps ‘the cause ‘
They can’t even stick to their own dam ideas on what is and what is not climate .
Or for that matter what is “local” and what is “global”…

Dear Mr (Dr ?) Crouch
When the surface temperature record has been manipulated as much as it has, and always in the same direction, the odds drop of a string of anomalous high temps drop from 540,000 : 1 to evens.

Rampant population growth and changes to the environment caused by humans, including the burning of fossil fuels and the conversion of nearly 43% of the planet’s land to farms or cities, threaten to cause an abrupt and unpredictable shift in the global ecosystem, 22 scientists from five countries said in their paper.
“..abrupt and unpredictable..” – After all the billions we’ve thrown at these fools they warn of “warming” but refer to all of it as “unpredictable”.
I WANT MY MONEY BACK!

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